Belle Point Poets

As a regional small press focused on the Mid-South, we are eager to explore the ways that this in-between part of the country relates to more established regions like the South/Deep South and the Midwest. We are especially interested in supporting work by writers from states that border our home base of Arkansas to explore conversations across our borders. This reading features three of our current/forthcoming Louisiana poets: Nikki Ummel, Madeline Trosclair-Rotolo, and Alison Pelegrin.

Nikki Ummel's Hush: Inside these pages, Nikki Ummel leads us into a quiet corner. Intimacy takes on many forms as she considers the weight of being responsible for those she loves. Whether confronting the reality of a sick sister, recalling traumatic experiences, or wandering the streets of New Orleans, Hush hums with a tenderness that stays with you long after the lights go out. Madeline Trosclair-Rotolo's Bottomlands: These poems manifest the Louisiana Gulf Coast and all its capacity for an environment experienced in full color. Crafting in equal turns a coming-of-age narrative and an ecological meditation, Madeline Trosclair-Rotolo invites readers to inhabit a space where they must consider the frightening reality of hurricanes, climate change, and a home ever threatened by the prospect of loss—while nonetheless managing always to find ways to keep communion. Wholly broken and often holy, Bottomlands is a debut collection by a poet as attuned to her own voice as to the beauties and dangers of the world around her. Alison Pelegrin is one of the contributors to our forthcoming Mid/South Sonnets anthology, edited by C.T. Salazar and Casie Dodd.